Part Professor Layton, part Tex Murphy, this take on puzzle gaming had potential but is clunky and not really fun.
The game uses a noir crime mystery wrapped with corny semi-full-motion video bits, with a 60's style gameshow and a decent variety of puzzles mixed throughout. This is closer to a puzzle-focused game than Doctor Lautrec by a long shot. About half of the puzzles are actually pretty good, but the other half are either painfully easy, buggy, or badly explained. Had those puzzles been more refined and polished, I think the game would've worked ok for me.
The good:
* The cheeky noir game environment is unique
* There are some good puzzles to be had in the game
* There is a decent underlying storyline (you're a contestant on a puzzle-based game show, winning your way from day to day, but you're in danger from a mysterious source...)
* The retro-ish fake-full-motion-video (more like short repeated snippets, not real full motion) is nostalgic
* Cut use of 3ds features like the camera. (e.g. You'll be in your hotel room and look at a mirror, and using the 3ds front facing camera, you see yourself in the mirror within 3d scene)
* Decent voice-overs
The not-so-good:
* Puzzles are very inconsistent, and in a few cases, buggy
* Some music and vocal cues are repeated way too often
* Some lack of polish -- sound queues cut off early, long load segments that show a 2 second animation followed by another long load segment
Overall, this falls well into the "almost, but not quite", but given that it seems they were close to a solid game but had some execution issues, this one is more "disappointing".